Capote [DVD]

This brutally honest portrait of author Truman Capote, with its stunning photography (by Adam Kimmel) and Academy Award-winning acting, has been one of the most "decorated" films of 1995. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-winner as Best Actor, becomes Capote in this film--small, effete, and vulnerable, but also selfish, petulant, weak, and sometimes cruel. Catherine Keener, as Harper Lee, Capote's childhood friend, offers a stunning contrast to Hoffman's Capote. Tall, honest, and committed to keeping Capote focused, she grounds the film, while serving as Capote's research assistant during his investigation of the cold-blooded killings of four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959.

At the opening of the film, the clean, flat plains and unadorned farmhouse belonging to the victims form a visual contrast with Capote's frantic life in New York. A naive teenager's discovery of the murders, the savagery of the murders, and effects of the murders on the townspeople continue the contrasts between the harsh realities of local life and the esoteric lifestyle of Capote. When Perry Smith (sensitively played by Clifton Collins, Jr.) and Richard Eugene Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) are arrested, and Capote makes contact with Smith, the viewer suddenly sees Capote and Smith as similar--both lonely, sad, a bit shy, and sometimes frightened. As Perry Smith begins to confide in Capote, the similarities of their backgrounds and dysfunctional families become even more obvious.

Exceptionally opportunistic, Capote is also deeply affected by Smith, feeding him when his hunger strike leaves him close to death, but also borrowing Smith's personal journals for his research because "I don't want the world to see you as a monster." Sometimes abandoning Smith and Hickock for months at a time, Capote comes and goes in their lives, leaving Smith desperate at times, and causing Jack Dunphy, Capote's lover, to accuse Capote of using Smith. As the six years pass between the crime and the publication of In Cold Blood, Capote himself deteriorates from alcohol and drugs as inexorably as Smith and Hickock have done while awaiting execution.

The interactions between Hoffman, as Capote, and Collins, as Smith, lead to poignant scenes of great emotion--Capote dissembling when Smith wants to know the name of the book he is writing, Capote refusing to pay a visit to Smith until just before his execution, and Capote crying "I did everything I could," when clearly he did not. Intensely acted, sensitively directly, stunningly photographed, and hauntingly human, this memorable film takes a close, personal look at Capote and the man he fears may be his alter ego. Mary Whipple

Roger Jon Ellory, who dedicated his masterpiece 'A Quiet Belief in Angels' to Truman Capote, urged me to see this film and within a few minutes of the start I could see why. I wanted to see it before I read the novel on which it is based, IN COLD BLOOD. This movie is not a lifetime biopic; instead it covers what were surely the most important five years in the life of one of the greatest American writers of his time, which he dedicated to writing what would become his last completed novel - although it was classified as non-fiction as it was based on real events.

I think you would benefit from a prior knowledge of Capote and who he was in order to enjoy this film. I can imagine that anyone knowing nothing about him might find it all rather uninteresting. But anybody with a curiosity to know more about this enigmatic, gregarious and highly intelligent man should find it captivating, due in no small part to the portrayal by Hoffman, who probably took a big risk by accepting the part because if he had got it wrong he could have been ridiculed for years. For example, there's Capote's very unusual voice; I must admit that I opted to have the subtitles switched on because I found it difficult at times to understand what Hoffman was saying, but later on when I watched the very interesting 'extras' on the DVD - which included an interview with Capote himself - I realised that the reproduction of his voice was remarkably accurate. It must have been very difficult to speak like that without sounding camp, but Hoffman never does. But the bigger insight into the character of the great man is discovered when the viewer realises that the relationship he has been developing with a convicted murderer on death row has been highly manipulative despite its origins of a sympathy and understanding for a young man troubled and isolated, as Capote clearly had been earlier in his own life. Basically, Capote wanted to control the killers' stay of execution to suit his own means, and when he eventually felt able to complete his book after more than four years in the making, and when he felt that he might have a nervous breakdown if it could not be finished off soon, he had the power and influence to speed up the execution. So the irony is that while the title of the novel leads you to think only of the ruthlessness of the killers, there is something of a double-entendre that Capote may or may not have been aware of: his own cold-bloodedness at determining how long two men should live, and when they should die.

It's hard to think of any other actor playing the part of Truman Capote, and there can really be no question that Philip Seymour Hoffman was a worthy winner of his Academy Award for Best Actor. He absolutely made this film what it is, although mention must be made of a perfect supporting cast and high-quality screenplay and direction.

At the start of the movie, I would have given a lot to be standing next to Truman Capote at his party, both of us half drunk, listening to his anecdotes and trading quips with him. At the end of the movie, I wouldn't have wanted to be in the same room with him.

Capote is a major motion picture, in my view, with a great, mesmerizing performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote. Hoffman doesn't just mimic Capote's languid lisp and effeminate mannerisms. He captures the man's drive, his ambition, his empathy, his charm, his determination to get what he wants. What Capote wants is to write a book, and the book is going to be the story of the slaughter of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, by two drifters, Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.). The two broke into the Clutter's home because they'd heard there was $10,000 hidden. They tied up Herb Clutter and his 15-year-old son, Kenyon, and took them to the basement. They tied up Bonnie Clutter and the 16-year-old daughter, Nancy, and left them upstairs. After searching the house and finding no hidden cash, Hickock intended to rape Nancy. Smith stopped him...but then slit Herb Clutter's throat and used a shotgun to blast his head. Then Smith used the shotgun on the son, the mother and the daughter. They left with only about $50.

Capote and Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), a friend acting as his assistant, travel to Holcomb and spend three months talking to everyone they can find, from Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the cop in charge, to the teen-agers who knew the young Clutters. After Hickock and Smith are captured, Capote develops a strange, almost intimate, relationship with Smith. "It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house," he says at one point, "and one day he went out the back door and I went out the front." He is writing what he knows will be a great book, but it can have no ending until Perry finally breaks down and tells him what happened the night of the killings. And it still will have no end until, all appeals having failed, Hickock and Perry are hanged. Years go by. To get this story, Capote will use and manipulate Perry, a man more vulnerable than we might think. Capote lies to him, uses emotional blackmail, perhaps even believes himself some of the emotions he is displaying to Perry. But all the while, Capote's ambition and ruthlessness to write his story never waver, no matter how emotionally wrenching it has become for him. Of course, he does get the story, Perry and Hickock are hanged and In Cold Blood becomes one of the masterpieces of American literature.

Hoffman manages to evoke a reluctant admiration for Capote. If you've ever seen the photo of Capote used on the dust jacket of his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, there is no doubt that the man is flamboyant and amused by people's reaction to his distinctiveness. There's also no doubt that as a teen-ager, Capote probably was unmercifully treated by his peers. One can't help but admire Capote's talent and his single-mindedness, or be repelled by his willingness to do just about anything to get the story and write his book.

Hoffman gives an extraordinary performance. Also excellent are so many others in the cast, particularly Chris Cooper, Clifton Collins, Jr. and Catherine Keener. If In Cold Blood is a book worth reading, Capote is a movie worth seeing.